Five Inspirations is a series in which we ask directors to share five things that shaped and informed their film. Stephen Karam's The Humans is exclusively showing on MUBI in many countries starting August 12, 2022, in the series Debuts.
INSPIRATION #1
Brigitte Mira in Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
This very interior film (in a pre-war space) and the soulful performance by Brigitte Mira always had me thinking about how to shoot Jayne Houdyshell.
INSPIRATION #2
NYC Chinatown tenements skyshapes
I took these shots of my building’s air shafts on Eldridge Street a year before we started filming—and versions of the shots made it into the film and formed the entire opening.
INSPIRATION #3
Photographs of empty spaces by Todd Hido
And Lucy Sante’s Paris Review essay, “The Empty Room”:
The more empty the photograph, the more it implies horror. The void that dominates an empty photograph is the site of past human activity. It presents itself as a hole in the middle of the picture. The beds, tables, chairs, lamps are not the subject; they are the boundary. Some empty images tease the eye, suggesting clues that may dissolve upon closer examination. More often the scene is as near to a blank canvas as it can be without fading into nothingness. But then we, as habituated viewers, tend to brush a dramatic gloss upon such pictures. What we see cannot be as perfectly banal as it seems. The lighting and composition awaken unconscious memories of crime-scene photos; the drama comes from what is missing. It’s a bit like Sherlock Holmes’s dog who did not bark. What is missing is an apparent reason for the picture to have been taken.
INSPIRATION #4
Yi Yi (2000) by Edward Yang
INSPIRATION #5
Three Colors: Blue (1994) by Krzysztof Kieślowski
